For nearly a quarter-century, I have worked with family businesses. In board meetings, in family meetings, at crowded company dinners, I sit at the same table as the owners and the family members. The topics discussed at these tables are remarkably similar from one company to the next: investments, money, titles, shares, where the children will study and what they will study. These are important matters, and they come up at every meeting without fail.
Over the years, it was not what gets said at these tables, but what goes unsaid, that began to catch my attention.
I could explain what I mean at length, with examples. But instead, let me suggest a small experiment.
Ask yourself this question: When you picture this company ten years from now, what scene comes to mind? Take your time. Do you see a company larger than today's, a company that has entered new lines of business, a more settled and calmer order, or something else entirely? You surely have an answer; everyone inside this business does.
Now try to answer the same question on behalf of the person in your family who is in this business with you. What answer do you think your son, your daughter, your father, or your sibling would give? Try to write their answer, in their own words.
Giving your own answer was easy. But when you wrote theirs, were you just as at ease, or did you pause for a moment?
Most people pause here. And it is on exactly this pause that I am writing this article.
Because your pausing does not mean they have no answer to this question. They have an answer too; and in all likelihood they have thought about it at least as much as you have. You pause because, to this day, you have never heard their answer. You have been discussing investment, money, and shares together for years; but you have probably never once asked one another, "How do you see the future of this company?"
What is more, this is not limited to a single question. Let us continue the same experiment by adding two more.
One is about timing: when do you think is the right time to hand the management and responsibility of this business to the next generation? Today, within a few years, or "later than that"? Once you have given your answer, consider the same question for the person across from you. When they say "the right time," do you think they mean the same date you do?
The other is about the future of the partnership: if you run this business with a sibling or a partner, how do you think ownership and partnership should take shape over the next ten years? Should everyone remain within a single company structure (shared management, shared decision-making, one budget and one strategy), or should each person's area of responsibility clearly separate over time (dividing up the business lines and responsibilities, moving ahead with separate budgets and more independent decisions, perhaps even heading toward separate companies)? Now write how they would answer the same question. Are the two of you drawing the same picture?
Most people pause for a moment on these questions too. All three concern people you have shared the same table with for years. But in all likelihood you have never put any of these three questions to one another outright.
I run into similar situations in meetings as well.
A few years ago, at a family meeting, I asked an owner approaching sixty: "When are you thinking of discussing these matters as a family?" His answer was ready: "Later. The child is at the start of the road; let him ripen a little more." A few days later, I asked his son the same question. His answer was ready too: "I have been waiting for this conversation for years." Both were sincere, and both were right from their own point of view. They were talking about the same company. Yet to the father the time was still early; to the son it had long since arrived.
The interesting part was this. The father was waiting, thinking, "Let my son get a little more ready, then we will talk," while the son was waiting, thinking, "Let me not be disrespectful and raise it before my father does." Both wanted the same conversation to happen, but each was waiting for the other to take the first step. In the end, that conversation did not begin for years.
Another example comes from two brothers who had run a company together for years. Both kept saying, at every turn, "We agree on everything"; and from the outside, it really did look that way. During a piece of work, I asked each of them the same question separately: "How do you think this partnership will continue over the next ten years?" One said, "We are a single whole; this structure will carry on as it is." The other said, "At some point, the healthiest thing would be for each of us to withdraw into his own area." Both had answered so comfortably that each was sure his brother thought the same. They had assumed for years that they thought alike; yet they had never once discussed the matter between them.
In none of these examples is anyone saying anything wrong. Each person's answer is consistent and sincere from their own point of view. The problem lies not in the answers, but in the fact that these questions have never, to this day, been discussed together within the family.
Because successionThe transfer of management and ownership in a family business to the next generation — approached not as a moment of 'handover' but as a long development journey that begins with growing the next generation. See in glossary → is not a single decision. It is a long process that contains many separate topics. Expectations about the company's future, timing, values, the future of the partnership — each of these is a separate agenda. Yet in most families these topics are not taken up one by one.
The reason is not indifference. There is always a more urgent-looking item on the table. An investment is waiting, the season is closing, the exchange rate is on the move. And so the question "How do you see the future?" is endlessly postponed.
So is there really no way to make these unspoken things visible?
The questions I have been asking since the beginning of this article were not chosen at random. A view of the company's future, the timing of the succession, and the future of the partnership are three of the most critical yet least-discussed topics of succession at most tables. I have been discussing these topics with families one by one for years. Over time, I noticed this: however open the conversation, it is not easy to see everyone's true thinking on every topic all at once. In a meeting everyone speaks in turn, and some topics never come up at all. What is more, many people cannot voice every thought just as freely in front of their father or their sibling.
At SPALDA® AcademyAn academy whose idea was seeded in 2018, whose pilot development began in 2022, and which launched in 2025. It develops the next generation in family businesses not merely as operational managers but as responsible leaders who grasp the whole of the corporate entity. See in glossary →, we developed Bridge Index out of exactly this need. Bridge Index is a piece of work in which, across the eight topics that need to be discussed during the succession process, every member of the family — the current generation and the next alike — answers the same questions separately. The three questions you tried in this article were three of those eight topics.
There are twenty-four questions in total. It is completed online, in about twelve minutes. No one is given a grade at the end. What emerges is not a report card but a map. It shows which topics you think alike on as a family, which topics you diverge on, and which topic it would be best to begin the first conversation with.
An important part of the work actually happens while you are answering the questions, before any report. Each question makes you think again about a subject you had perhaps never considered until that day — just like the question at the start of this article. Bridge Index does this twenty-four times.
If you would like to try this with your family, you can reach Bridge Index at bridge.spalda.academy.
At the start of this article I asked you a few questions. You gave your own answers easily. But when it came to the other person's answer, you probably paused for a moment. I think this pause is not a problem but a beginning. Whichever question made you pause, that is where you can begin the first conversation.